The truth diet

Deeply immersed in that classic Chinese ‘novel’ of over 2000 pages, Journey to the West, I came across this recommendation for a truth diet – of a Buddhist tendency:

She [the bodhisattva] ordered him to adhere to the truth and eat only vegetarian food, cutting out the five pungent vegetables as well as the three forbidden things: wild goose, dog and fish. (JTW, vol. 1, p. 178)